Tarantino will never work with 'that son of a b____' Spike Lee again

Quentin Tarantino has vowed that he will never work with director Spike Lee again.

According to Brazilian newspaper O Globo, in a story picked up by Indiewire, Tarantino made the comments while in Sao Paulo promoting his upcoming film Hateful Eight, a spaghetti western.

At the conference, Tarantino was asked if he would ever work with Lee again, to which the True Romance director replied: “Never”.

Lee – who was recently awarded an honorary Oscar – directed Girl 6, a 1996 film about a struggling actress who becomes a phone sex operator, in which Tarantino made a cameo as a film director.

Tarantino didn’t give an initial explanation for his dismissal of working with Lee, and moved on to on to field other questions. However, he then returned to the question, saying: “I have two more films to direct and I will not spend any of them working with that son of a b----. He [Lee] would be very happy the day I accept to work with him. But it will not happen.”

Tarantino at a protest in New York in October criticising the police's use of excessive force against black AmericansCredit:
Getty Images/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez

The longstanding feud between Tarantino and Lee has been well documented in the media, with the latter vocal in his criticism of the repeated use of the N-word in Tarantino’s films.

Hostilities between the two directors first became public in 1997 with the release of Tarantino’s film Jackie Brown, where Lee expressed his concern over the excessive use of racist language. Lee is reported to have said at the time: “Quentin is infatuated with that word… What does he want to be made – an honorary black man?”

Tarantino responded: “As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. And to say that I can’t do that because I’m white... that is racist.”

In 2013, Lee stated that he would no watch Tarantino’s film Django Unchained because it would be “disrespectful” to his ancestors. “American Slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honour them,” Lee wrote on Twitter after promising to boycott the film.

Samuel L Jackson, who starred in Django Unchained and is friends with both directors, was asked about the feud in a 2013 Playboy interview: "Spike saying 'I'm not going to see Django because it's an insult to my ancestors'? It's fine if you think that, but then you have nothing else to say about the movie, period, because you don't know if Quentin insulted your ancestors or not."

At the Sao Paolo press conference, Tarantino also said that he will only direct two more films: "The Hateful Eight" is my eighth film. The next will be the ninth, and the next [after that] will be the last."

"I have a mythological perspective with respect to myself and my career," he said, adding that he'd likely devote his time to producing the work of others after ending his career as a director.

Tarantino has recently been embroiled in a feud with police in the US after criticising speaking out against the deaths of black Americans at the hands of officers. Police unions are now encouraging a boycott of The Hateful Eight, which is released in the UK in January.